Tribe, p.2
Tribe, page 2
“I love you,” he whispers quite simply. She laughs and keeps dancing like a whirling dervish, hooked into the beat.
Just before the sun comes up, Pierre pulls the others out of the club. “Got to watch the sun rise over the ocean …”
The beach in front of Olivia’s villa is deserted. It feels like the music travelled with Jude and is pounding rhythmically through the waves. Pierre runs to the house and gets his board. Benjy and Olivia kiss on a blanket.
Jude plays his guitar and watches Tselane, mesmerised by her dancing, the tatty hem of her skirt flying like a hoop round her spinning body. A giddy silhouette of freedom. He sings Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”.
Hannes smiles at Jude. “Anything left, boet? I’m not ready to come down.”
Jude puts his arm round his friend’s shoulders. “Always, I’ve always got more …” Looking into Hannes’s eyes, he says, “I miss you. It gets cold in London, cold and lonely as hell.”
“You know, I’ll come if you need me. Pierre as well, but you’ve got Benjy, Benjy is there with his babe. I dig her but why does she call him Ben?”
“He wanted someone more sophisticated than his Birdy.” They laugh at the mention of Benjy’s mother, whom they all love. “I didn’t mean to worry you, it’s not like that, I just wish we got together more, like this.”
“You forget I’ve got a wife and baby back home. Besides, we couldn’t live in London. We’re African. Pierre needs the ocean and I need the sky, the wide South African sky. Your sky hangs low, it’s ominously close to your heads, you realise that?” Hannes lights a cigarette, inhaling deep into his lungs.
“Yes, I imagine that’s why we’re so miserable.” Jude pauses and looks up at Tselane. “Not that one, mind you.”
“Isn’t she from South Africa?” Hannes smiles.
Still mesmerised by Tselane, Jude pulls a folded envelope out of his pocket, leaves it in the palm of his hand. “I’ve never seen a girl like that …”
Hannes laughs. “Boet, I’ve known you most of your fokken life and you’ve never seen a lot of girls like a lot of girls. She’s cool, but I’m not coming down right now. Fix the last fix …”
They laugh as only old friends who don’t need to explain themselves can laugh. Jude empties the last bit of powder onto his hand. Hannes licks the tip of his finger and rubs his gums with the traces. The relief that comes with the awful taste is palpable. They call the others. Tselane, in a world of her own, keeps dancing.
Olivia, Benjy and Pierre have a turn, then Pierre wades out in a futile search for a left-hand break on a currentless ocean. Hannes calls to him, “Boet, this is not a surfer’s paradise!”
Jude keeps watching Tselane. He sees Olivia walk over to her.
“T, baby, it’s last rounds. Come on, or you’ll have a nasty come down.”
Tselane stops and turns to Jude. Out of breath from dancing, she tumbles onto the blanket next to him. He reaches the palm of his hand towards her mouth, their eyes meet, she smiles, not laughing now. “This is the last bit, you’ll have to …”
“I know,” she smiles, “lick it, I’ve seen people do it …”
She licks his hand then draws it towards her face, cupping her cheek with it. There’s an intimacy in her action. The others look away, but they feel it.
Olivia leaps up. Her perfect body silhouetted by the rising sun, she runs towards the waves, leans down and writes in the sand: BENJYOLIVIAPIERREHANNESTSELANEJUDE … no longer individual names but one powerful word. She’s decorating her word with shells and seaweed when a wave washes over it, but the imprint remains and she shouts out to the universe, “Now and forever, BenjyOliviaPierreHannesTselaneJude, now and forever. We’re the tribe. NO TRESPASSERS ALLOWED!” Laughing, she runs into the arms of the man she loves.
As an orange sun rises above a pink sky, they walk back to the house singing “Lust for Life”.
The days drift into one another. Tselane and Jude fall in love with the inevitability of the changing of seasons. Clubbing, drugging, intense conversations, they throw the hottest parties, and sometimes Pierre allows a girl to stay for sex, but never to linger.
The tone for the next five years is set, the years of ease and excess. They will all be at the height of their beauty, reach the peak of their wealth, fame and love for one another.
The days of glory, of frivolity and blue skies.
NO TRESPASSERS ALLOWED.
CHANGE THE THINGS THAT SHOULD BE CHANGED
OLIVIA
The red soles of Olivia’s Louboutin shoes clip-clop down the hospital corridor. Nurses, doctors and even patients turn their heads. Wherever Olivia goes, people are thrilled by the sight of her. Even here, where people are depressed and drugged, she’s still Olivia Stone. She walks steadily, ever aware of the effect she has, but thoughtful, fretting, clip-clopping as fast as she can without tearing down the corridor as her heart yearns forward.
They’ve hidden him in a private ward. God knows, he can’t be seen here. Half of his patients are probably checked into the clinic right now. Jesus, Jude, she thinks, This, this is the last fucking time I get one of these calls and rush over to a hospital to see you, dripped up while we fight for your life.
She carries a Gucci nappy bag. It’s filled, not with baby paraphernalia, but rather with anything she could think of that Tselane might need. Poking out the side, a bunch of yellow poppies laughs in the face of hospital gloom. The bag is heavier now than it was when she had the twins, but Olivia works out, she can handle it. Olivia can handle anything.
Drawing closer to room 12B, she quickens her power pace, feeling Tselane’s tears. She’s resolved not to crumble. She’s here for Tselane and Jude, and this time she’s going to fix things, handle them her way.
The doors swing open and there sits her friend, on an old hospital chair, holding a hand. Olivia has a flashback. Seven years ago, twelve years ago. Tselane desperately holding Jude’s limp hand. There’s a drip in his arm and a machine that sighs every few seconds. She tries not to look at his face; it’s as though looking would be a betrayal to the real Jude. But then her eyes fail her heart and she finds herself stealing a guilty glance. Even on a bad fix, Jude never looked this lost to the world.
A timid nurse stands at the back of the room. Olivia nods to her. “I’m here now. You can take your tea. And if you’d be so kind …?” She hands the flowers to the nurse, who looks enquiringly at Tselane.
“It’s all right, luv, you can leave us.”
Olivia drops the bag and sits next to Tselane. “Darling, what time did it happen?”
Tselane looks at her watch. “I’ve lost track. We’ve been here since about four. I should never have left him. It’s the first thing the doctors taught me: never leave him alone; arrange a suicide watch. Call the sponsor, a family member, don’t leave him unattended. But I was quick. We needed stuff, stupid stuff, I could have ordered, waited till Arnold was around. Called you – anything. Liv? I think I just wanted to get away … from him.” She cries, looking at her sleeping husband. “Bloody twit, now look what I’ve done!”
Olivia pulls her away from the chair and onto a couch. Talking slowly, as if to one of her sons, she says, “T, you needed food. You’ll end up like pensioners eating out of tins. Besides, he could have done this while you were in the shower, you know that. And he’s alive! That’s the most important thing; you got him here on time.” She takes a silver pillbox out of her Hermès bag. “I spoke to Arnold. He suggested I give you a Xanax. Here, pop it under your tongue.” She passes a bottle of water to Tselane.
“My father-in-law, the great psychiatrist, yes, he always thinks I should take something. I can’t. I have to be awake for Jude.”
“I’m here now. If you’re asleep when he wakes up, I’ll wake you. Besides, it won’t put you to sleep, just take the edge off …”
“The edge?” Tselane laughs. “Us and the edge. Always seeking out the perfect high. Coke to get up, joint to get down. Did we ever get it right?”
Olivia laughs too. “We always got it right. Darling, I’m not trying to get you high. Would I get you high at a time like this? Take the fucking pill and chill.”
“Mrs Back-in-the-Day, you’ll find a way of getting me high at your own funeral! Give me the pill!”
At first, instead of making her calmer, it seems to make her more anxious. Tselane’s head falls to the edge of the couch and she cries, “That’s the thing, Liv. He could do it while I’m in the shower. I’m the one who lives like a paranoid addict, hiding razors and paracetemol. What am I going to do?”
Olivia pulls the small trembling form towards herself. She covers Tselane’s shoulders with a blanket. “You’re going to start by eating the chicken soup.”
Tselane looks at the flask her friend has produced out of the bag, appalled. “I can’t. It’s very kind, but you of all people know I can’t eat now.”
“Well, you have to because it’s from Birdy, so if I don’t go home with an empty flask, you could cost me my marriage. Birdy accepted Ben marrying a goy, but she won’t accept the goy daughter-in-law’s friend rejecting her chicken soup.”
“I bring disgrace to your marriage, I know,” Tselane says, managing a laugh. “What else have you got in the bag?”
Olivia empties it out. Godiva chocolates, a cashmere blanket, the old thermos flask and a book. “Oh, I brought this, have you read it?”
Tselane lifts her head from the other goodies and looks at the book, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.
“No.”
“You can read it while you’re here. It’s sad and beautiful and full of the meaning of life.”
Tselane puts the book back in the bag. “I think not. I’ll be avoiding the meaning of life just now, thank you.”
Olivia unscrews the thermos flask and the aroma of chicken soup fills the room with memories of love. Olivia lifts Tselane’s face and looks into her bloodshot eyes. “Birdy loves you. Whatever you need, she really would do anything, you know that, don’t you?”
Tselane falls back into Olivia’s lap and her body convulses in tears. Looking out the window, Olivia is distracted for a moment by a woman who appears to be mumbling to herself as she paces up and down the garden. Olivia looks down at Tselane and, regaining her humorous composure says, “She’s just a Jewish mother, and her theory is that if you eat the chicken soup everything will get better, so drink a cup of shut-the-fuck-up!” She proceeds to pour small spoons of soup into her friend’s mouth. This time Tselane doesn’t protest. Instead she laughs.
“Do you remember, Liv, how I fed you like this when you were Sly Anna? You were so thin and you wouldn’t eat. Your dad wouldn’t let you out of the clinic until you picked up 4kg. Pity we never had Birdy with her chicken soup back in the day.”
Olivia feeds Tselane another mouthful. “Who’s Mrs Back-in-the-Day now?” she laughs.
“Liv, will you tell Birdy I said thanks, and sorry?”
“I’ll do no such thing. You’re going to finish the flask.”
“I’m not talking about the soup. I’m sorry about Jude, about him not knowing when she was sick and about me letting him slip like this.” Tselane looks over at her husband and starts to cry again.
“No, I will not tell her you’re sorry. Of course she misses you both, but she knows you saved him. You’ve forgotten how bad he was. That sounds ludicrous given the circumstances in this room. Right now your husband’s not quite a billboard for mental health. Mind you,” Olivia pauses, staring at the woman in the garden again, “you should see the crazy redhead outside. If Hannes was here, you two would be out there following her. T, you got Jude through addiction, you’ve given him the last twelve years and they’ve been glorious, mostly.”
“This is the second attempt.” Tselane looks guilty.
Olivia spoons down another mouthful. “We’re going to finish the chicken soup for Birdy, every day until she stops sending it, and you know she will send it every day. Because she’s the Paul McCartney of Jewish mothers. All she needs is love and people to feed.”
They laugh with the relief of women who find laughter in things that aren’t funny. Women who laugh their way out of the worst of times.
“You’ve never judged me,” Tselane says, suddenly serious.
“The hell I haven’t,” admonishes Olivia. “I’ve always judged you. I judge everyone and I judged you good as the next. I knew you were doing the right thing, that’s all. But I’ve made a decision. Things have to change, T. He needs the others.”
Tselane’s body goes rigid. “Olivia, I absolutely cannot take that risk. They’re his triggers. I miss everyone more, more than they miss me, I never …”
“Darling, I’ve given this a lot of thought. I know what sacrifices you made. The tribe were your family, and you did the right thing. The guys were his triggers. He would be dead in a derelict flat if you hadn’t isolated him when you did. But everyone’s changed now. No one is using. Everyone’s clean, older, duller. The wolf at the door isn’t the dealer anymore; it’s the black dog.”
Tselane drops her head back into Olivia’s lap. Putting the flask on the floor at their feet, Olivia covers her friend’s rounded body with her own. She’s playing with Tselane’s short dreadlocks when a small voice comes from the heap below her. “I’m afraid. I can’t live without him. I panic all the time because I could never live in this world without him, you know that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do, and we’ll bring him back, all of him. The old Jude.” Olivia pauses and looks over at the unconscious man on the bed. “T, I’m here for you like always, but he needs his mates now. They’re not a risk anymore. I’ve spoken to Arnold. His psychiatrist will change his meds, he needs some time here for observation, and then a few weeks for recovery, but then we’re getting together.”
“I don’t believe Arnold agreed. It can’t be done. I can’t risk everything.”
Olivia speaks slowly. “You can’t keep it up. You can’t keep coming to these places alone. We’re a tribe. We care for our own. ‘Courage to change the things that should be changed.’ It’s time now; it’s time for a change. And you’re going to accept with serenity.”
“You have cared for me. All these years, you’ve cared for me.”
“And I always will, T. But it’s not enough. The times and risks have changed. You did the right thing, but now Jude needs his mates. They’re clean and they’re going to help. Soon as he’s out of here, I’m getting you out of London. We’re going to Hannes in South Africa. His place was just splashed all over Tatler. It’s the perfect spot for recovery and the perfect spot for a reunion. Besides the wild animals and environmental whatnot, Hannes has won every award, food, design and, oh fuck … I’ll get them to put the wine away. It’ll be marvellous. We’ll party like it’s 1999, except we won’t party …”
Tselane sings something – a few Zulu words jumbled in with humming. Her voice has trailed off for some time before Olivia realises that the body on her lap is no longer trembling with tears, but heaving in a different rhythm. Tselane has finally conceded to sleep. Olivia relaxes, knowing this part of the battle is won.
She creeps out from under Tselane’s body and walks to the window. It’s grown dark outside but she can still make out the halo of red hair as the woman continues to pace. My God, she wonders, how long before someone collects her? It’s cold out. Perhaps the monotony of the walking and talking calms her. If Jude was awake, she could ask his professional opinion. She considers taking the woman some chicken soup, but realises she might disturb some strange equilibrium the woman might have. Tampering with mad people in an institution, presuming to know better than the doctors, she can just imagine the headlines in tomorrow’s papers: “OLIVIA STONE HARASSES LUNATIC IN LOCAL ASYLUM. WHO ARE THE REAL CRAZY PEOPLE IN ENGLAND?” It would give Tselane a good laugh. For that reason alone she should do it. Looking back at Tselane, breathing softly, Olivia feels the fullness of her own pain diminishing.
From inside her handbag comes the ringing sound of home. She pulls herself together, crosses the room and picks it up. Silencing the phone, she walks to Jude and stands looking down at him. Even now, a tube away from death, he is beautiful, somehow serene.
Tenderly, she holds his hand. “You bastard, you fucking little shit! Look what you have done to us.” Kissing him, she sits down on the hospital chair by his side, allowing herself a moment to weep quietly.
She cries for her husband, Ben, who has lost and longed for his best friend these past eleven years. She cries for them all, for their lost youth. For the fear of what she must now arrange, and the fear that she might be promising something impossible. She cries out of guilt that maybe she’s doing this as a way to distract herself from the fact that she has nothing to write. She cries because she knows that no matter how much surgery she has, her face is becoming gaunt, and that there are prettier, younger mothers out there. She cries out of the fear that she is no good, because ironically, with the publication of each new book she feels a little less sure in the world, intellectually impoverished and demeaned by her peers, because they all know her books do not sell on merit – they sell because of who Olivia is. But she does not cry for Jude. Enough tears have been shed for Jude.
Glaring into a mirror from her make-up pouch, she paints her lush lips, then stands and walks to the corridor where she dials Ben, her voice becoming vulnerable when she hears his. “He’s stable, she’s terrible. Arnold says the worst is over. Yes, I told her, we’re going. Fuck knows how. You know me, I’ll arrange it. Will you get Alec to sort the boys out with dinner? I’ll call Hannes from here. No, if I do, I’ll tell you. Yes, you too. Me? I’m hunky-fucking-dory.” Her instinctively speeding mind is now racing ahead of itself, making plans.
Olivia stares at the phone as though it holds an answer, some elixir. Back inside the ward she remembers that in fact it does. Ben has downloaded memories and phases of their lives onto her phone. Whenever Olivia is anxious or sad, she looks at old photographs and videos. It’s her calming ritual. He knows her so well … Olivia’s a sucker for the memory trap. Photos are her favourite fix. Mrs Back-in-the-Day, who knew that long ago could be so far away. She allows herself a few minutes of reminiscing before the anxiety kicks in and her fingers dial the unfamiliar numbers.
